NOCTURN

24/06/2026

When we launched Good Enough, we built it around q***r men in Scotland. But since the call-out went live, we’ve been hearing from men across the UK who recognise themselves in this work and want to share their story too.

So we’re opening it up.

If you’re a gay, bi or trans man anywhere in the UK and something here connects, the masking, the performing, the years of managing who you let people see, we want to hear from you.

Share your story online, written or as a voice recording. A few sentences is enough. You don’t need to be in Scotland. You don’t need to be a writer. You just need something true.

www.nocturncreative.co.uk/good-enough

An R&D project by NOCTURN, supported by Immersive Arts UK funding.

Photo Jamie Bubb

Switchboard LGBTQIA+ Support Line ourstory_scotland Sanctuary Q***r Arts The Work Room Artlink Central Limited Birnam Arts Citymoves Dance Agency SCIO ***rStories Q***rArt StorytellingProject

18/06/2026

“A boy wanting to dance was gay. Effeminate. There was no support from family or school or peers. That hurdle took me until I was 30.”

The barriers weren’t physical. They were the ones that get built around you when people decide who you’re allowed to be. And the hardest part is, you accept them. You build your life around them, because staying inside them feels like the safest thing to do. That acceptance becomes so deep you stop noticing it’s there.

The fuel to push through? It came from the same word that tried to stop you. No.

Good Enough is gathering stories like this. The ones shaped by years of living inside limits that were never yours to begin with. If you recognise any of this, we’d like to hear from you.

www.nocturncreative.co.uk/good-enough

An R&D project by NOCTURN, supported by funding.

***rarts ***rStories Q***rArt StorytellingProject

Film by

15/06/2026

A door into a story only a q***r man would recognise.

How tired were you by the end of certain days?

Not regular tired. The straight-wedding tired. The work-do tired. The tired that comes from watching yourself all evening, your laugh, your hands, whether anyone could tell.

You don't need to answer it directly. It's just a door. If it opens something, share it with us:

www.nocturncreative.co.uk/good-enough

An R&D project by NOCTURN, supported by Immersive Arts UK funding.

Please DM us for more information and please reshare.

Switchboard LGBT+ Support Line OurStory Scotland Sanctuary Q***r Arts ***rArt

11/06/2026

We're forming a small cohort of creative collaborators for Good Enough, a new dance and digital project gathering the stories q***r men rarely tell.

It all takes place online: 7 sessions across July and August, Thursdays 7 to 8pm. Together we'll make movement, tell stories, and create sounds for the score, and you'll help shape the ideas and the development of the interactive box at the heart of the work. You can share as much or as little as feels right.

10 places. Applications close 30 June. This cohort is for Scotland-based q***r men.

No performing experience needed. No need to be publicly out. You just bring your experience, and help shape the work.

We're looking for gay, bi and trans men over 50, based in Scotland. If that's you, we'd love to hear from you.

Find out more at www.nocturncreative.co.uk/good-enough or message us here.

An R&D project by NOCTURN, supported by Immersive Arts UK funding.
Switchboard LGBT+ Support Line OurStory Scotland Sanctuary Q***r Arts ***rStories ***rArt

10/06/2026

Move with us this summer. A two-day contemporary dance intensive in Newbury — two distinct works, two approaches, one weekend built together.

Park House School, Newbury
Sat 22 & Sun 23 August · 10am–4pm
£100 total (two instalments of £50)

Day One with the wonderful Sonia Rafferty (Trinity Laban Dance Faculty) — a huge inspiration to how I teach. Day Two with me, drawing on movement from our current project, Good Enough.

For adult movers of all ages, with a particular welcome to dancers 50+ with some experience.

A supportive space to reconnect, challenge yourself, and share the joy of moving with others who feel the same.

Booking is for both days together — deliberately, so we can build something across the full weekend.

Places are limited and went fast last time.

To book visit nocturncreative.co.uk

08/06/2026

I'm genuinely super excited about how the different facets of our digital dance project are starting to come together.

My past experiences of motion capture could be summed up in one word: reductive. The latency between live movement and what gets captured. The way certain things — like the articulation of your back — simply don't register. The extra effort it takes just to make force or speed visible.

Today was the opposite. And I felt completely spoilt.

Thanks to the support of CoSTAR Realtime Lab Edinburgh — a state-of-the-art R&D facility built to drive the next generation of screen technology and on-set virtual production — and in the expert hands of Calum Main, I had the space and time to genuinely experiment. More sensors meant the captured movement actually felt like me. Next to no latency meant I could stay in the moment, rather than editing and adjusting as I moved. It's given me solid grounding for what needs to happen when we go into residency at Moves in July.

What's exciting is that today's capture will also inform the story box itself — my movement physically embodied within its design. Our narrative is an internal one, the kind our LGBTQ+ community navigates daily. So it feels right that the movement won't only live as something you see in film and AR, but as a physical form held within the box.

But the biggest surprise was something more personal.

I'll be honest. As an older man returning to dance after hip surgery and a difficult recovery, I'm not where I feel I should be physically. That brings personal demons I'm learning to navigate gently. And part of making movement means filming yourself and watching it back — and who doesn't hate watching themselves?

Today, the playback wasn't me on a screen. It was my captured movement on a digital mannequin. And instantly, the negativity was gone. I could see clearly what to focus on, what to explore more, what to do less of. It was just a body moving. Not mine — and because of that, I could meet it with honesty instead of judgment.

I went in looking for a tool. I think I found something gentler than that.

NOCTURN’s ‘Good Enough: Multisensory Q***r Storytellings’ is supported by Immersive Arts UK funding.

02/06/2026

Are you a q***r man with a story never quite told?

We're making Good Enough — a new immersive storytelling project — and we're looking for the stories that rarely get heard.

Not the coming out. Not the well-worn ones. We're after the quieter, harder-to-name experiences: the masking, the performing, the years of managing who you let people see, the long effort of trying to be enough.

We're especially keen to hear from gay, bi and trans men over 50 in Scotland, because these stories deserve room and we want to make sure they're heard. But if that's not you and you have a story that fits, we'd still love to hear it.

There are two ways to take part:

🔹 Share your story — online, written or as a voice recording. However it comes out is fine.
🔹 Become a creative tester — help shape the work itself through a small number of online sessions.

Everything you share is treated with care, and support is there if any of it lands hard.

Find out more and take part: www.nocturncreative.co.uk/good-enough
An R&D project by NOCTURN, supported by funding.

📸 Jamie Bubb

OUR FUNDERS & PARTNERS

Switchboard, OurStory Scotland, Sanctuary Q***r Arts, Cove Park,The Work Room, Birnam Arts, Citymoves Dance Agency SCIO & Artlink Central

Special thanks to CoStar providing technical support as part of their Collaborative R&D programme.

***rStories ***rArt

28/04/2026